


come rain or come shine

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Series: romance and nibblies [8]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Rain, Weddings, change of plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: They say rain on your wedding day is good luck.Patrick thinks that’s probably only true when the rain stays outside where it belongs.





	come rain or come shine

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for [Julie](https://birdy-lady.tumblr.com/), who came up with the idea during our regularly scheduled emo hours.
> 
> Title comes from [a Ray Charles classic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxs3jGy9k9w).

They say rain on your wedding day is good luck. 

Patrick thinks that’s probably only true when the rain stays outside where it belongs.

They’d found a quaint little inn on the outskirts of Elm Grove, just far enough away from Schitt’s Creek to keep anyone they hadn’t invited from dropping in, just close enough to still feel like home. David had fallen instantly in love with the sunny parlor at the back of the inn, with its rustic wooden bookshelves filled with well-loved old tomes and its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a wide, sweeping porch and a well-tended field beyond, surrounded by lush, leafy apple trees. 

Patrick had fallen in love with the way David looked in the golden, late afternoon sunlight spilling in on them and the way he could already picture them there, lifelong promises brushing just as warm and bright across their lips.

The contract had been signed and the deposit put down before they’d even left the building. There’d been no need to go home and mull it over. No need to see any place else.

This was it. This was the place where they were going to get married.

The months after had been dedicated to planning the rest around it: finding the precise shade of blue to best complement the dark, warm walnut of the parlor floors, renting furniture and linens that would look at home amongst the verdant field and thick grove of trees, debating the pastoral appeal of peonies in the centerpieces as compared to garden roses. David had insisted on an outdoor reception, dinner and drinks and dancing as the blush and tangerine of sunset fade into dusky purple dotted with stars, a breeze wrapping around them soft and fragrant in the early autumn night. Patrick had insisted on a back-up plan, just in case, and so David had agreed that in case of rain, they could hold both the ceremony and the reception in the parlor, retreating to the covered porch between for a brief cocktail hour so that the room could be switched over.

Patrick had hoped of course that they wouldn’t need the back-up plan. But now instead it seems they should have made a back-up to their back-up plan. 

He stands in the parlor doorway watching rain pour into trash bins scattered across the floor where their guests are supposed to be seated, chairs still arrayed amongst them in drenched rows beneath a nightmarish constellation of holes in the ceiling. Even though the sudden storm looks like it will end soon, everything left behind will still be a soggy, bedraggled mess, their dreams of a perfect day washed away in the deluge.

Judging by the raised voices coming from some other room, the Roses have a pretty good handle on the anger side of the situation, which is helpful because at the moment, Patrick can only find it in himself to be disappointed. Disappointed that every careful decision they’ve debated and fought over and apologized for and made and unmade and remade is all for naught. Disappointed that the vision David had spent so long crafting for this day—for them—is going to go unseen. Disappointed that after months and months of waiting, today isn’t the day he gets to stand in the golden light of the afternoon sun and finally make David his husband.

“He needs you,” Stevie says as she squeezes into the doorway beside him. Her face is carefully impassive as she surveys the damage, but when she turns to meet Patrick’s eyes, he can see the sorrow glinting there, sharp and silver like the curve of a knife. 

It’s a little bit of a relief, he thinks, to know others wanted this for them as much as they wanted it for themselves.

His knock on the door of the honeymoon suite goes unanswered, but he slips in through the unlocked door anyway. “David, are you—”

He finds his fiancé sitting on the floor beside the door, knees pulled up to his chest, eyes closed, head tipped miserably back against the wall. Despite the dolorous position he’s in, despite the splotchy red stained along his eyelids and across his cheeks and down past the crisp white collar of his shirt, he’s still the most beautiful thing Patrick has ever seen, and another tiny piece of his heart crumbles to dust at the thought that he doesn’t get to marry this man today.

Removing his jacket and dropping it onto the bed beside David’s, Patrick folds himself into place at David’s side, twisting their fingers together. In the silence, he runs his thumb along the ridge of the three gold rings on David’s right hand—just for today, his left empty and awaiting the return of the single ring David had given back to him last night, the ring currently sitting heavy and useless in Patrick’s pocket.

The quiet beats on around them like the pulse of a leadened heart. 

Outside, the rain finally tapers off, the sun already threatening to peek through the gloom, but Patrick knows—they both do—that it’s too little too late. There will be no wedding today.

“I hate this,” David says finally, his voice thick and wet. 

“I know.” Patrick leans over to press a kiss to his temple and another to his cheek and another to the corner of his eye where a fresh tear slips free. “You spent so much time and effort planning all this for us—I mean I know I helped, but you’re the one who knows what flowers go with what and the difference between engraved and…”

“Embossed,” David fills in, shaking his head.

“Yeah, that. And I’m sorry that it’s all ruined. I know you wanted things to be perfect—”

“No.”

“I wanted them to be perfect, too. I wanted them to be perfect for you, and—”

“No,” David says again, finally opening his eyes to stop Patrick with a glossy stare. “You think I’m upset about… flowers or— or seat covers?”

“ _I_ am,” Patrick replies, finding a little surge of that anger he was missing before. Not at David—never at David. But at the owners of this stupid, charming little inn with its leaky disaster of a roof and at mother nature for dropping a storm right into their well-dressed laps and at himself for not insisting on a back-up to the back-up just in case. “We spent so long planning this— _you_ spent so long planning this, making sure it was everything we wanted it to be—and it was. Or it was going to be at least. It was going to be perfect and amazing, just like you, and now the whole day is ruined just because—”

“Button.” David says it so softly, his mouth twisting so sweetly around the name that Patrick feels his breath rattle in his chest. 

He’s not going to cry. He can’t. David is crying, and that means Patrick has to be the strong one right now; it’s his turn to be the one holding them both together, so he swallows against that burning lump in his throat until he feels like he can breathe around it. 

It only works until David opens his mouth again.

“Button,” he says once more, somehow softer still, “I don’t care about any of that. I mean, I do, but it’s not why—” He swallows thickly, more tears squeezing out even as he scrunches his face up against them. “I’ve been looking forward to this day for so long. And it’s not because of— of decorations or tasteful dance music or cake—”

“It’s _not_ about cake?” Patrick deadpans, and David laughs, sodden but warm as the sun breaking through the clouds outside their window.

“Hush, you. It’s _mostly_ not about cake. It’s about _you_ . I just—” He looks at Patrick with bright eyes, mouth twisting into a frown that belies the soft smile threatening to form instead. “I wanted to end this day married to you.” He shrugs, like he hasn’t just said the most perfect thing Patrick can imagine. “I didn’t want to go to sleep tonight _not_ as your husband.”

Patrick leans in and kisses him, a slow, sweet press of lips, savoring the way the words taste in his mouth, the way David melts into him as if to confirm their truth. 

“Come on,” he says when he manages to pull himself away from the draw of his fiancé’s lips. David tilts his head in question but allows himself to be pulled to his feet. After shooting off a quick text, Patrick slips his jacket back on, straightening his tie and giving David a reassuring smile when their eyes meet in the mirror, and when they’re both dressed and ready, and when they’ve shared one more lingering kiss with Patrick’s hands on David’s jaw and David’s fingers in Patrick’s hair, Patrick slips his hand into David’s and pulls him out the door.

The voices in the room at the bottom of the stairs seem to have dulled from hysterical yelling to merely firmly raised, and Patrick drags them past the closed office door, past the dining room where the few guests not already driven home by the storm are gathering their things to go, past the ruined parlor and out onto the porch. He’s already down most of the steps before David manages to pull him to a halt. 

“What are we doing?” 

Patrick turns back to find David awash in all that beautiful, golden sunlight he’d waited months to see again, a crooked smile stretched across his mouth. He looks just as gorgeous as Patrick had thought he would, and he thanks god and fate and the entire fucking universe for setting him on the path that would bring him to this exact moment.

“We’re getting married, best.”

That smile goes more crooked first, then straightens as it blossoms into something wider and brighter, something somehow just for Patrick but for the whole world, too, and David flings himself down the steps in his soon-to-be-husband’s wake.

Their feet sink into the grass, mud squelching beneath them with every step, and a flicker of remorse crosses Patrick’s face at the thought of their shoes, but David only squeezes his hand tighter, encouraging him on across the field. They weave between rain-soaked tables topped with soggy, wilted centerpieces and duck beneath the heavy branches of well-soaked trees. Disappearing into the grove, they wind their way around trunks and under dripping leaves, until they find the lone figure waiting for them just on the other side, the setting sun burnishing the three of them in copper and rose. 

“You know I don’t have any legal authority to do this, right?” Stevie asks.

Patrick only smiles. “Don’t care. You can bully Roland into putting today’s date on the license whenever he signs it.”

Her eyes narrow and the line of her mouth goes firm, like she’s offended by that. But he’d seen the look on her face earlier, and even if he hadn’t, he knows her well enough by now to see through her defenses. 

He knows she’ll do this for them, and he loves her for it.

She’ll do this for them, and then tomorrow or next weekend or a month or two from now, they’ll pull everything together for a proper redo of this day. They’ll put their suits on again and they’ll surround themselves with everyone they love and they’ll speak the vows they’ve written for each other. They’ll eat cake and drink champagne and dance until dawn. They’ll have the wedding they’ve both been dreaming of, the one they should have had today, or they’ll have a different kind of wedding entirely if they want. They’ll do it because they deserve it, because it will give them another day to celebrate—their wedding day—one more in the ever-growing list of memorable days of their lives. 

But today, Patrick thinks, today is the day he wants to remember most. 

Today with the pouring rain and the golden light, with the disappointment and the tears and the way the word _husband_ had tasted on David’s lips. Today, here, now, in the warmth of the setting sun, under the rustling of an autumn breeze, feet caked in mud and fingers intertwined, as their best friend reads them a ceremony script from her phone. As they laugh through all the parts she changes and cry when she gets to the vows. As they slip golden rings onto each other’s fingers and she officially calls them husbands for the first time. As they pull each other into a kiss before she’s even done and they press wet, laughing kisses against her cheeks as she tries to cringe away. As she slips back into the grove, off toward the inn, leaving them to watch the sun dip below the horizon and the first stars burst to life. As they wander back in the plummy dark and crawl beneath the soft, plush covers of their honeymoon suite bed, exhausted and overwhelmed and deliriously happy, to fall asleep curved around one another, their rings pressed together where their hands splay across the steady rise and fall of David’s chest.

Patrick wants to remember it all, the bad and the good, the disappointment and the joy, the rain and the shine, every single minute of the day he marries David Rose.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


End file.
